How to Self-Publish Your Own Books as a Business Model

Let me just be honest with you. This post is going to REALLY get into self-publishing your own book. Like really really. There are so many misconceptions about how difficult publishing is in general, let alone self-publishing.

But before we get started, let me just say that it irks me beyond almost anything else when I see online marketers, experts, and infopreneurs say they can teach you how to make $20K per month online in 3 months or less, or that they’ll tell you how to bring in $100K off of one course. Results will vary, skeazy marketers. P.S. Skeazy means you’re both sketchy and sleazy, bruh. It’s not a good look. Don’t promise people the same results you’ve achieved (or worse . . . only seen someone else achieve).

So, in this post I want to show you a bit of how I’ve set up publishing printed books for a full-time income, and how I honestly think that you, with a solid non-fiction book idea, can earn truly decent income from printed books in a relatively short time.

Why self-publish? Because it’s a legit business model. Let’s explore.

Traditional publishing looks super glamorous. Book tours. National TV appearances. Lovely and large royalty advances. A publisher going crazy over you and catering to your every whim. Nothing to do but turn in a manuscript and all the layout, design, promotion, and sales will be taken care of for you. Ballin’. Money rollin’ on in.

Reality? New authors get small advances, have to do a lot of their own promotion, and won’t likely get tours and crazy publicity opportunities set up for them. Also. The ballin’? Please let me break down advances, royalties, etc. for us.

The realness of profits in self-publishing vs. traditional.

As a new author, if you get a $5,000 royalty advance, you’re doing well. And that’s a beautiful thing, getting $5,000 dollars all at once for your hard work of writing a book. Yay. Money in the bank.

But. That $5,000 is a royalty advance. Meaning you won’t make another cent off of your book until you earn that $5,000 back in your royalties (which are a percentage of the book’s price or your publishing company’s profits).

You’ll have to sell 3,333 copies of your book to pay your publishing company back your advance.
This means you’ll never see another dollar of profit (after your original advance) until your book has sold over 3,000 copies.

Do you know how much you would have made on those same 3,333 copies of your book through the self-publishing model I teach in Self-Publish Your Book Already (1 of the 10 courses inside my online school, Publish Your Thing)? Assuming you charged the same $20 per copy and had ~170 pages in your book?

$30,000

Because you’ll be making over $9 with each sale.

So, selling 3,000 copies can either get you $5,000 or $30,000–which is enough for me to live off for a year.

That’s why I present self-publishing as a business model. If you want the fame and reach that traditional publishing can possibly get you, that’s completely understandable. But this post is for those of you who want to use self-published printed books (pBooks instead of eBooks) as a business model and way for you to make part or all of your living.

My total from the two printed books I’ve published (though one of them makes the majority of the income) over a 6-month period is almost $16,000, so I know this can work. I want to tell you my process for setting this system up. I reveal all my secrets, strategies, and tutorials in #ZeroToBook, but I have lots of great tips for you in this post. Le trust.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Step 0: Build a Platform

Whether you get your book traditionally published or you self-publish your own book, one thing that will be required, and insanely helpful, is a platform. Whether you choose to build this through a podcast, a popular YouTube channel, a blog, or even an epic Instagram account, you’ll need a platform.

It doesn’t have to be crazy huge. It just has to be targeted. Back when I only had one book published, and only had 80 friends to mail each week from my MailChimp account, my book still made a decent part-time income each month. It was very tailored to my audience, and very useful at the live workshops I taught in Austin.

Whatever size platform and audience you can build (that’s focused and humanized), you’ll be doing yourself a favor when it comes time to sell your book . . . or anything else for that matter.

Step 1: Plan Your Book

If you know me even a little bit, then you’ll likely know that my planning process involves poster boards, index cards, colored markers, and a timer. This has been an obsession for five years or more now, and I don’t think it’s ever going away.

Get out your index cards and set your timer for 20 minutes.

Write down all the steps it will take to teach your book’s topic or write down all the categories of things you want to share for a particular topic or process (each item on a separate card–but you can also just spread them out on a poster board if you don’t have index cards).

Analyze your cards. Can anything be combined? Is anything missing? Does anything need to be eliminated?

Now, for each remaining card you have, set your timer for 7 minutes and flip the card over to record any sub-steps or sub-topics you’ll want to explain related to the card’s main topic. Ex: if the card was “learn your camera’s setup,” then the sub-points might be “auto vs. manual, changing white balance, where to find f-stop,” etc.

Now, combine, eliminate, or fill out any further sub-topics.

When you’re done with this process, the front of your cards will be your chapters and the back will be the sections of your chapters. Planning a really solid book that answers your audience’s pressing questions + questions they didn’t even know they had, is a great way to build a book that gets talked about and gets sold.

Step 2: Research + Finalize Your Outline

Once you’ve gone through the initial planning process, it’s time to do a little bit of homework before you finalize your outline. Check other books, courses, workshops, and educational materials on the same topic. Since you’re doing this after you developed a general outline from scratch, your direction won’t be too influenced by others’ works, but you will be reminded of anything you forgot that you feel the expertise and desire to include.

Finalize your outline by putting all of the information in an order that will be logical for your audience, whether newbies, advanced users, or something in between.

Step 3: Write Your Book. Get it edited.

Once you have your outline, you can either do step 4 (so that you’re writing your book directly into its layout), or you can begin writing. I like to set up a separate Google Doc for each chapter if I’m writing in GDocs first, but most of the time, I create directly in my book’s layout software (Apple Pages) so that when I’m done writing, it can go to an editor immediately then be uploaded straight to my printer of choice.

I always recommend hiring an outside editor. You are too close to your book and too used to your book to spot all the errors–and when you self-publish, you want to minimize errors and kill the design and layout so that it won’t look like a not-so-epic attempt at a professional publication.

P.S. You don’t have to write your book in the order it’s outlined in. Skip around to the chapters that are most exciting to you when you meet a slow period. I like to write an exciting section or two, then a not-so-exciting section, and repeat that process until the book is done.

Step 4: Design Your Book’s Interior.

Or get it designed for you. In #ZeroToBook, I show you how to design your own interior or start from a template, but you can always have a book designer lay out your book for you if it’s in the budget to do so.

As you design, keep in mind:

Readability. Make sure the fonts and font sizes will be easy for your target audience to digest.

Margins. Make sure you leave enough room on all edges of your pages per your printer’s specifications.

Step 5: Design Your Book’s Cover.

Before you get started in this process, I encourage you to go search Amazon for books with your keywords or topic in the title. Look at the covers. I won’t lie, most self-published books have horrible covers, which means that for almost any search term, the majority of books that pop up will simply not look good. That means there is so much room for you to come in and slay. A good book cover design will stand out, but a great design and catchy title will be practically impossible to ignore. Great design converts well. Seriously. Even a sub-par book can sell well with great design and a solid description of the contents. So imagine when your great book with great design hits the market.

When it’s time to design your book cover, here are a few tips:

Don’t create a white cover if you plan to sell primarily online–this will look odd on sites like Amazon.com that don’t put a border around your cover image. People will not be able to tell where your book cover ends and the web page begins. If you want a light cover, try a cream or gray (like the cover below).

Make sure you have the right to use any fonts, images, or elements you incorporate into your cover. Read each company’s or seller’s terms of use very carefully.

Step 6: Create Your Publishing House + Get Legit.

To look and feel the most legit, I recommend setting up your company as a publishing house. You can publish under your current business, or you can set up a separate LLC you own in order to publish books. Creating your own small press is a great way to obtain the ISBN (which is the number necessary to distinguish your book from others on the market) and bar code you’ll need to sell your book in most marketplaces.

Step 7: Design Your Book’s Promotional Materials.

You will likely want most of the items below to promote your book.

Cover mockups.

Interior mockups.

Sales pages.

Facebook ads.

Pinterest pins.

Etc.

I share a full list of these in #ZeroToBook (and I’ll show you how to make them!), but remember to think outside of the box, and remember that visuals really help people imagine themselves reading your book and using your work to learn + grow.

Some well laid out promotional materials (in your blog’s sidebar, on social media, on your sales pages, in your blog posts, etc.) will seriously help convert viewers to buyers. Spend a lot of time designing quality images (ask a peer who will be honest with you) or invest money in a designer who can create beautiful, compelling images for you.

Step 8: Get Your ISBN Numbers + Official Copyright.

Submit your book to obtain an official copyright from the governing entity where you live. In the U.S., you can head over to Copyright.gov. It’s important to note that the moment you publish an original work in a tangible form, you hold the copyright, but if you really want to enforce the copyright (especially in court), it’s a good idea to file legitimately. It’s very inexpensive–but I won’t lie, it’s not a quick process. It can take 8 months or more. This shouldn’t prevent you from getting your book to market though, you can still put a serious and nifty copyright statement in your book anyways.

Step 9: Publish Your Book. And Set Up Your Distribution Channels.

You’ll have many choices when it comes to printing and publishing your book. You can:

Do it the old school way of finding a local printer (or online printer) who will print + ship you a certain number of your books, which you can then sell or distribute yourself.

Get it done by printing with a company such as IngramSpark, who can either ship the books to you or distribute them to booksellers like Amazon.com for you.

Publish directly with Amazon.com using their system CreateSpace. This is the method I most often use.

Use a “vanity” publisher, which you’d have to pay in order to get your book published, but they typically take care of design or other elements for you. I highly recommend against this option though because it’s a huge $$ investment and I think you should maintain more control over your work and always be able to DIY the parts that require it.

Step 10: Launch Your Book + Set Up “Perfect Paths” to Your Product.

Once you’ve gotten your book published, or set up with a print + fulfillment company, it’s time to launch. I also consider it a super wise time investment to create ideal paths you want people to take to get to your book’s purchase page. Do you want them to:

go from a blog post —> a sales page?

go from a tweet —> a landing page with a free chapter —> an email list that promotes the book along with other tips on the topic?

go from your sidebar image —> a blog post on the topic —> a sales page?

I have some unique and effective paths to show you in #ZeroToBook, but if you’re unable to take that class with us, think creatively: What are all the ways a potential reader can come across your book? What will intrigue them? What would cause you to buy if you were a part of your own ideal audience? How can you establish trust? What can you give away for free that will really entice people to buy the full experience?

So, what’s the verdict, might you try publishing a book of your own? Do you think you’d ever pursue it as a business model?

Want more guidance, insider secrets, and a focused community to go through the book creation and publishing process with? Make sure you’re signed up for our email list in the sidebar!

Stéphanie, I really do think it’s about assessing which format suits your audience better, but I also think it’s about just trying stuff. With the print-on-demand model that CreateSpace and other companies offer, you’re not incurring any inventory costs, or too much work/trouble to offer your book in the printed format. To me, it’s worth a try.

I personally still prefer printed books. When I get a digital file, I always want to print it off so I can write on it, and flip through the pages (old school style). So I guess I’m saying that if it’s not too much trouble, and you think there’s a chance your audience might respond to it, why not try both?

I feel like all of my thoughts have been in perfect paths, lately! You are all up in my head. This was perfect and right on time. I am still narrowing down what I will focus on as far as business goes but pbooks is definitely at the top of the list! Thanks again!

Regina, I just tryed out your method, and guess what? In less then 15 minutes I’m done with the chapters and chapters content plan for my parenting book that I’ve been planning for over a year now! Thank you for great advices ( as always!)

Ninja high-five! Great post, as usual Regina. I just started working on my first mandala coloring book (old school pencil,paper, drawing style) to be converted to digital copy and print copy. This post just broke down the steps perfectly. Next month I’ll be starting on another info book to share. Awesomeness and thank you!

I’m always pee-your-pants excited when I see that you have a new post!!! YES. YES!!!!! I’m really excited to dive into this post and really get into all the juicy details. And setting up your own publishing house? Uh … AWESOME IDEA.

Once again, an incredibly awesome and helpful post. Thank you! I am curious, though, why you use (prefer?) createspace over IngramSpark. At first glance, at least with a full-color book, there would be a much higher payout to a publisher through IngramSpark. But maybe I’m missing something here? (i.e. because it wouldn’t be fulfilled by Amazon, the product wouldn’t be eligible for free shipping on orders over $35?) Curious…

For color books, I usually always share/use IngramSpark or another service. I agree with you about the pricing–plus Ingram has the hardcover options and a high-quality color option. I also like Blurb for color (though, more expensive).

However, on almost all the projects I create, CreateSpace provides the quickest turn around time and the best profits.

I LOVE Blurb too and have used them before for photo books. Their interface makes it so beyondo easy to make a beautiful book. But yeah, a bit pricey. Thanks so much for your response–I appreciate it! 🙂

I’m really loving the #GoIndependent conference and super-mega-helpful posts you’ve been posting lately! It’s helping me become more professional, take what I want to do more seriously, and start anew (I am rebranding, basically, with help from the guest post here by Jessica of Jessica Says (I think it is?) to fit in with where my life is at right now, because my previous blog title was literally SO two years ago, and it’s hard to deliberately live in the past—and I have PTSD!).

Publishing a memoir is something I plan to do after my life-changing moment occurs, which I am saving up for (’tis where a lot of my money is going right now), in addition to publishing a cookbook, both of which people keep asking me for.

I have two questions: If you make your current business a publishing house, is it a virtual house and not requiring of… well, I guess that is the legalities part. I keep missing the SBB+ sell dates >.< so I don’t know the legalities of creating an LLC yet (but your “uni” coming up is going to be available more than once, if I understand correctly, so I look forward to that, though I’ll create an LLC after my name change)…

I don’t know if I’m making sense. I guess… is the step of creating your publishing house explained further in the course? And if so, is this course going to be available again in the future? My cousin and I each want to publish books, so I feel like, if it is explained further in the course, it might answer some of the technicalities of all of that… maybe.

Liz, hey you. Thank you for the kind words. Yes, I explain the step of setting up your own LLC in the course, and we’ll also talk about how to protect that business. I think it’s presented in a very simple way in the course that makes it easy to act on.

P.S. You are right. “Uni” will be available during Spring and Fall on a recurring basis each year.

I am SO excited for this workshop! Publish my own photography and design books have been a dream of mine but I had no idea how to go about it. I’ve had questions and hesitations with self-publishing but I know this will be a big help 🙂

So excited for #zerotobook! I spent all of 1 minute deciding whether to sign up. I have book ideas, so many, I have a google doc with them and have one fleshed out with chapters. I need to work on this!
Your content is awesome, you overdeliver big time and it really does show people that your courses are A+! I can’t wait to get started tomorrow!

Regina. This post is the shit. I’m finishing up my third round of edits for my first ebook (titled Online Dating Done Right), and this post couldn’t have come at a better time. I had no idea how to obtain an ISBN; though I am bummed to hear it takes so long. Perhaps I will release it as an ebook now and then offer it as printed material when the ISBN comes through. Anyway, thank you so much for your detailed post and conversion funnel tips!

Ah, just did a bit of research. Turns out you get a free ISBN via CreateSpace… so if you’re only looking to use CreateSpace and Amazon, you should be good to go with that! Regina, if you have any further advice on that, let me know 🙂

Hey Jenn, the official copyright is typically what takes several months (which you don’t need in order to publish). You can grab your own ISBNs at http://www.myidentifiers.com in a very short time. I recommend using your own ISBNs so that you will be the publisher of record of your book.

If you use CreateSpace ISBNs, then CreateSpace will be your official publisher, so that’s one of the major drawbacks of that.

Also, you’ll need a new ISBN for each edition of your book (eBook, pBook, audio, etc.), so owning your own will come in handy then too.

This is something that I’d love to do eventually. I’m still in the early stages of creating my business and building my platform, but self publishing would definitely be the way I will go when the time comes… if it ever comes!

This is such an informative post! Self-publishing is something that I’m planning to do, but I’m thinking more of fiction. There are many fiction self-published authors who make a living from it and that’s definitively something I would like to explore. Thanks for sharing this great post with us!

If you want to make the hop from blogger to creative coach, these tips will help you transition plus keep your readers’ trust. A quick look at how being an infopreneur helped me ear six figures in a year, and the one thing that earned a considerable portion of that.

Oh my gosh, quick, what things do I know that I can write a book on?! This was, as ever, amazeballs. I had no idea how shocking the royalties programme was! I’ve always wanted to write a book, I’m keeping this page marked so once I know what I want to tackle I can come back here and really put all this good stuff to use!

Hey Regina, Great Post and tips on how to self publish a book and yes I totally agree self publishing is a easier way for the majority to package there knowledge and launch there ebook or paper back and sell it online or through other distributions.

I liked this post too much, that I am going to add it to my favorites list. There is really everything needed in here! I would just love if it’s possible to have more details for the step number 6 and how to go legit? How much will it cost?

I hope that you don’t mind that I share it with my brand followers on Twitter and facebook? I just can’t resist to share it! 😀

Keep doing the great work Regina! (I read once that you said it’s not you real name, sorry I forgot what was the name so I am going to stick to Regina :p).

I would love to see some other posts that treat each step in a deeper level.

Regina, I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your blog has given me such a wealth of information and your blog planner helped me to get my own blog started. Now I’m eagerly awaiting my proof-copy of my very first self-published coloring book to be sent to me via Createspace.com. You are most definitely a ninja and, IMO, Queen of the Blogs. I love what you’re doing and thank you for helping people like me launch their dreams. xo

Do I need a Tax ID or can I just use my social for now with CreateSpace? I want to make sure my book sells before I go getting into that whole sole proprietor nonsense (though I’d prefer an LLC but not sure if I can do that with just my name?).

Found this at the perfect time!
I’m just in the final stages of writing my book/ebook. I am feeling more persuaded to get it published as an actual, real life book!
I love your 3 Day Create, thank you so much for all of your great posts and products 🙂

Great and updated information on publishing. I was luck to have seen this when I was researching for my book to be published.
But, i was busy to do it my self. I had to hire a freelancer to help me prepare my manuscript. She did a great job. She did the proofreading and editing, interior layout formatting and bookcover design.
Here is her service urlhttps://goo.gl/jmof3y

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Hey 👋🏽. I’m Regina, and you are in the right place if . . .

You’re in the right place if you’ve realized that other people’s opinions on what you should be doing with your life don’t pay the bills. I’m obsessed with doing everything I can to help you take big actions, master your business model, sell in human ways, and actually have fun learning all the small steps and big ideas that go into creating your profitable online brand.

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